At the request of my sister, I have been tinkering with simple diagram templates for law students, lawyers & clerks to structure their legal analysis, and anchor a writing they have to make, evaluating parties claims in light of the law.
My first go is a Legal Claim Map — just a simple table template. The idea is to force the user to boil down the complexities into the clearest possible points with each issue area. That seems to be a large part of the user’s struggle, to get through all the complexities, points, subpoints, factors, subfactors, and make it clear what the salient points are.
This map would offer such a prompt, through its constraints and structure. Surely there are plenty of good iterations to be done from this template as a start.
It would also be cool to see briefs or other analysis documents summarized in such a table. I know I would rather take in the information from this type of format, rather than a multipage text document. There may be a danger in simplification, but I can imagine this table as the cover guiding analysis, and then the text document comign afterwards as essentially an extended footnote section.
If you have any ideas — or have built something to use in your own legal writing, I’d love to hear about it!
3 Comments
I like it. Will use it.
Hi Margaret
Really interested to see the work you have done on legal claim maps and other legal design ideas.
I have been developing a similar idea with case plans for English employment law cases to help individuals to understand the legal basis of their case and to apply the facts and evidence from their own case to work out how they will prove their case to an Employment Tribunal.
I think it is a really useful analysis tool.
Ian
Great, if you have any work product to share, I’d love to take a look!